The Dog in the Manger, illustrated by Milo Winter in a 1919 Aesop anthology

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The Dog in the Manger is a fable attributed to Aesop, concerning a dog who one afternoon lay down to sleep in the manger. On being awoken, he ferociously kept the cattle in the farm from eating the hay on which he chose to sleep, even though he was unable to eat it himself, leading an ox to mutter the moral of the fable:

People often begrudge others what they cannot enjoy themselves.

The phrase is proverbial, referring to people who spitefully prevent others from having something that they themselves have no use for. A typical example is the child who discards a toy — until a sibling tries to play with it. Then the first child becomes possessive about something it no longer wanted.

A famous play by Spaniard Lope de Vega takes this fable as a starter for the plot.

Charles Schulz used a twist on the story in a Peanuts comic strip, in which Lucy acquires a baseball card of Charlie Brown's favorite player, and she refuses to give it to him. After he leaves disconsolately, she decides she doesn't really like the card that much, and throws it away.

In Villette, by Charlotte Bronte, Madame Beck tells the heroine Lucy Snowe that M. Emmanuel must not marry her. Lucy retorts, "Dog in a Manger!" She believes Madame Beck herself wanted to marry M. Emmanuel but could not as he had no interest in her.

In Spanish, the story is called El Perro del Hortelano, or The Vegetable Gardener's Dog (also the title of the play by Lope de Vega).

In the documentary We which features the speeches of renowned Indian novelist Arundhati Roy on injustices of war, Western colonialism and terrorism throughout the 20th century in Middle East, a segment on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in the film features British leader Winston Churchill comparing Palestinians in 1937 to the dog in the manger after reading the Peel Commission which suggested partitioning British mandated Palestine into Arab and Jewish states. Churchill said of the Palestinians in 1937, "I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place."

The metaphor is also attributed to Jesus in the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas by comparing the dog with the Pharisees. In logion 102 Jesus states: Woe to them, the Pharisees! For they are like a dog sleeping in the manger of the cattle; for he neither eats, nor does he let the cattle eat.

[edit] See also

• Aesop's Fables
• Crab mentality

[edit] External links

• The Dog and the Manger - Full English text